


Run Your Race To Ruin

by o_contrary



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Implied dubcon, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Season 5 Spoilers, canon-typical swearing and drug use, meditations on death bordering on suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 15:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3451670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o_contrary/pseuds/o_contrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Happy finds him on the roof after Ope’s wake; Juice is surprised he’s had the place to himself for this long, however long it takes to burn through three joints and a lot of prayers.</i>
</p><p>In which Happy is sick of this shit, and Juice is surprisingly digging in his heels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run Your Race To Ruin

**Author's Note:**

> HEED THE WARNINGS. There's nothing happy about this except Happy, who isn't happy. I can't even find the doc for it, I had to lift it from soa_slash on lj.
> 
> Readthru by Axis, remaining fails are mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: Characters from Sons of Anarchy belong to Kurt Sutter, Sutter Ink, Linson Entertainment, Fox 21, and FX Productions. This is a transformative work of fiction; no copyright infringement is intended, no money is being made, please don't sue.
> 
> Title is from The Gutter Twins' 'Bete Noir' which is amazing and you should give a listen. Still no money being made, please don't sue.

Happy finds him on the roof after Ope’s wake; Juice is surprised he’s had the place to himself for this long, however long it takes to burn through three joints and a lot of prayers. Maybe everyone below thinks everyone else has the same idea about being on the roof and are just staying where they are instead of checking it out, but whatever the reason, Juice is intensely grateful. 

There’s a fifth of Jack, too, only he can’t force it past the knot of despair in his throat and tries the prayers to ease it instead, tries to wind it up until there’s nothing for it to do but _let go_. 

Prayers to forget, to remember, to keep Chibs (and the Club, but mostly Chibs, while he’s being brutally honest with himself) safe; they’re not what they once were, with Juice pushing him away with hands and feet and anything else he can muster to keep Chibs free of the taint of the clouds hovering on Juice’s horizon like the Reaper on their cuts, but Chibs doesn’t break. Zobelle, Jimmy O, Fiona, ATF – all through that mess, Chibs hadn’t broken, and the fact he’s so close to it now leaves Juice with ideas he doesn’t want about how things were supposed to go down.

Opie’s death had knocked Juice out of the haze of fear and guilt and sick desperation he’s been living under since fucking Roosevelt and Potter sank their teeth into him and tore him to nothing. Or maybe he did the tearing, finishing the job they themselves were continuing from Clay’s start on him in Stockton; it’s all blurred together now, and he just doesn’t _know_ anymore.

In these few stolen moments of clarity he’s smoking down to nothing as fast as he can, all he wants is for justice to be served, for Jax to find a way to get the Club on a path that isn’t soaked in blood and pain and greed, and for Chibs to be safe.

Just because they’re not what they used to be doesn’t mean it hadn’t still hurt like a motherfucker when Chibs stumbled off with the first croweater in his path away from the casket; that’s when Juice had made his exit. He thinks Chibs probably isn’t going to be looking out for himself the way he needs to for awhile, will use keeping Jax safe as an excuse to let his well-disguised self-destructive streak run free, and that maybe if Juice can still pray for him, it’ll do some good, misguided though he is.

It’s not like he’s praying for himself, after all. That has to mean something, be worth something.

He’s numb enough not to be surprised when Happy – who at times seems to have some bizarre Juice-specific radar, for all the good it does either of them – climbs up, silent as the ghost they all feel in Opie’s absence. Sometimes Juice thinks it’s not the sense of lethal efficiency around Happy that puts people off so much as how silent he can be, how very still. Happy’s not a sniper, prefers fists and knives and whatever is at hand that can cause the most trauma to guns, but had he taken a slightly different path, his kill count would be obscene.

And that would just be for the ones that someone, somewhere could confirm.

Then too, Happy glories in nothing so much as simple destruction; clean kill shots from a mile or more away wouldn’t satisfy his need for it, not really.

At times, Juice wishes his life weren’t fucked up to the point where he knows these things about someone he’s _close_ to, and it still doesn’t bother him in anything more than in the most abstract sense, even before this current state of affairs. 

He’s not so far gone, though, as not to notice the disquiet that’s been hovering over Happy like a shroud since Church, maybe before, maybe since everything bearing Clay’s touch started to unravel or just fucking _die_. Happy had flat-out told Clay ‘no’ on the cartel business, been lukewarm about the Nomad members patching in, and hasn’t really looked Tig in the eye since his brilliant plan of going after LaRoy had backfired so spectacularly; Juice is fairly certain he isn’t alone in his speculations about those two. And now that he’s been told in no uncertain terms to stand the fuck down, Happy’s discontent meter is redlining.

Happy’s their one-man strike team, always primed and ready to go off and leave _no goddamned witnesses_ ; it’s like telling a cruise missile ‘whoops, nevermind, back to the jet with you’ after it’s been launched. He’s the one chafing over it the most, but no one’s really pleased about it, either.

Juice has never envied Jax less than he does these days. He may be at the head of the table, but Clay isn’t done with that spot, isn’t near done with it, probably even thinks somewhere in that fucked up head of his – and Jesus, how had none of them noticed how far off the rumblestrips he was getting – that Jax is just his placeholder for the time being, until Clay grows the other half of his lung back or something.

And Juice just can’t seem to extricate himself from the old bastard’s orbit, is at times repulsed by himself for the hold he allows Clay to wield over him. Deep down, though, he thinks it’s the least of what he deserves. It’s penance and some perverted version of hope that if Clay can be forgiven and get himself back to good standing, Juice can unfuck this RICO mess and do the same. 

He knows better than anyone that nothing disappears forever, not anymore, but he’s doing as much as he can until the other shoe drops, trying to go above and beyond in every way, and now he’s just shit fucking tired.

With Opie gone, that’s an entire branch of the SAMCRO family tree wiped the fuck out, at least until his kids grow up. At that point, they’ll probably be the country’s biggest supporters of public transportation and wouldn’t touch a motorcycle if it was the only way across a river of lava blocking their way to safety. Jax will have to pull off some kind of miracle to make the Club into something anyone would encourage those poor kids to be a part of. They’ll all look after them, no question, but part of that will be keeping them firmly planted outside the Club’s doors.

The sound of Happy’s throat clearing and the feel of a long line of warmth at his side breaks Juice out of his musings, and he notes with some chagrin that he has no idea how long he’s been sitting there, staring at nothing while Happy stares at _him_. “Hey, Hap,” Juice greets him quietly, apologetic, and finds the bony jut of Happy’s shoulder with his temple as he makes a peace offering of joint #4. Happy doesn’t say anything at all as he takes it and lights it, dragging half of it in on the first inhale, but Juice gets it, anyway.

Sometimes it’s good to just be close to someone, and Happy doesn’t really do much in the way of normal human signs of affection other than those conditioned into him by the Club. Juice has met Betty Lowman, finds her to be as sweet and loving as Hap is mostly cold and untouchable, and usually tries not to think any more on Hap’s origins than he just has to.

For some reason, though – probably wedged in there right alongside the Juice-Radar and Unofficial Bodyguard portion – when Happy just needs some kind of closeness, he comes to Juice, always.

Chibs had asked him about it, once, and the only answer Juice had been able to give him was to shrug and tell him, “Your guess is as good as mine, man.”

It’s not sexual, usually, though there had been that time when Zobelle had them all going out of their damned minds and Chibs was doing the pushing away, blown to hell and coming back to the mess with Jimmy O and Fiona and goddamned crazeballs Cameron and that ATF cunt all jockeying for a piece of him (he gets that Fiona’s entitled, what with them being married and having a kid and all, but he doesn’t have to like it, even now).

Juice had been hacking, incessantly. It was the one thing he could do that no else could, and had the added benefit of being the thing most likely to turn up something they could actually _use_. He’d been poking and prodding and feeling up every angle he could think of for a good 72 hours before Happy had come in and found him asleep on his keyboard.

And, okay, hacking on a brief nap in a 72-hour time window is bad enough, and any hacker who says otherwise is a) richly embellishing the truth, or b) has speed and/or cocaine lining their nostrils and Red Bull flowing through their veins.

Hacking in the same scenario with added Happy Lowman looming and glowering over your shoulder? Really not helpful.

He’d said as much, and Happy had given him this odd expression – exasperation? Fondness? A passing desire to get his rocks off? Juice still has no idea – before yanking Juice’s chair away from the desk and dropping to his knees.

Getting head from Happy was like lust refereeing a fight versus flight cage match – no calling foul, no holds barred and it's the dirtiest fight ever, and somehow as fucking amazing as it is terrifying. When his eyes had been able to focus again, the information on Zobelle he’d been scouring for had been _right there_ on his screen, and he’s lucky Happy was thoughtful enough to put him back to rights, or he’d have gone tearing off to Church bare-assed with Happy on his heels, still wiping his mouth.

Later he was told that Happy’s mission to begin with had been to get Juice to get some rest – and it had worked, after a fashion. As soon as he’d relayed the information, he’d dropped like a sack of bricks until it was time to roll out.

A literal sack of bricks; Tig had been maniacally gleeful in telling Juice that Happy had caught him like he was some damsel with a case of the vapors.

There have been a few other instances – handjobs, mostly, on long runs with tight timeframes, or even just jacking themselves off and pretending not to notice what the other’s doing, or that they’re turned on by it – but nothing quite like that one time. Juice was – still is, hard as he’s trying not to – always going to turn to Chibs first, and Happy is always going to be Happy, too remote and unfathomable for anything real.

Mostly, it’s just this: Happy with an arm slung awkwardly over Juice’s shoulders while Juice leans into him and soaks up the attention. Like hetero-questionable lifemates, or something.

Juice relishes the quiet for a moment, because it won’t last. The tension that’s been growing in Happy is coming to a head, and Juice thinks he’s probably a part of that, wishes he has the right words to apologize for his ‘psychic neck wounds’ bleeding all over the place.

He’s pretty sure telling Happy he’s just another thing shriveling under Clay’s touch won’t have the desired result.

Still, for all the numbness and altered state and his lack of surprise at Happy turning up, when he speaks, his words would knock Juice on his ass if Happy wasn’t already pretty much propping him up. “Think I might go Nomad again.”

And Juice knows how _not_ happy Happy’s been, but he’d thought when he patched in, he’d stay. He’s family, now, and the idea of losing another of his brothers to _any_ circumstance right now, _now_ when they’re all still blissfully ignorant and don’t hate him, brings the sick feeling crashing right back to the pit of Juice’s stomach. “No,” he breathes out, hates how broken it is even muffled in Happy’s cut. Happy just tightens his arm. Juice hides his face in Happy’s leather, all semblance of his artificial calm dissipated like the smoke it had been borne on. “Why?”

There’s a good chance Happy won’t answer. He doesn’t even really owe Juice an explanation, but the fact that he’s up here apparently running the idea by Juice before acting on it instead of turning his patch in to Jax and just _leaving_ is significant on its own, and Juice has picked up a thing or three from Happy over the years. If he’s patient, if he waits, he’ll get something.

And Happy does make him wait for it, digging out his cigarettes and smoking one almost down to the filter before he says anything else. He doesn’t try to move away, though, and Juice doesn’t try to crowd in closer. “Clay’s started us down a bad road, brother, and he didn’t mark a single sign for us on the way in. Jax,” here Happy heaves a sigh that sounds like it comes from his toes, though his voice is flat as ever, “Jax is trying to fix it, yeah, but there are bodies dropping all over, and they ain’t the right ones.”

Juice can’t do anything but swallow the hysterical giggle that wants to well up at that, along with the urge to hum ‘Strange Fruit.’ He’s still not sure why he’s not one of those bodies; he’s only been able to speculate that he’s not meant to take his own life, that someone else is meant to carry that particular burden for him. Maybe it won’t actually be a burden at all.

“You could go Nomad, too,” Happy continues, this _weight_ to his words and Juice can feel himself being stared at even as he freezes, a stunned paralysis so complete he’s not sure he’s actually breathing anymore. “Wouldn’t have to ride together, but we could still watch each other’s backs, something comes up.”

Juice pulls back slowly. “You asking me to go steady, Hap?” He tries for snark, but it just comes out brittle and weak, and he gets a sharp elbow to the side for it.

“Something’s going on with you, Juice. It was bad enough after Stockton – ” 

Something about the way he says that makes Juice glad he hadn’t spoken of Clay earlier; living through it was bad enough without having to deal with other people’s speculations and insights as well.

“ – but since Miles, you’ve just checked out, brother. Your head’s not in this game that’s going on right now, and you’re gonna be one of those bodies. This is shit – and usually it’s my kind of thing, but not this time and not like this – with all these fucking lies and hidden goddamned agendas. And it’s never been your thing, even when you’re trying.”

Juice can’t decide where to point his roil of emotions first: this is more words from Happy than he’s heard him utter in months at a time, let alone at one sitting; that the word avalanche seems to be largely out of concern for him, Juice; or the idea that he and Happy are so diametrically opposed in their views of where Juice is gonna be when all the dust settles, yet have still managed to arrive at roughly the same conclusion. And the role reversal. Can’t forget that.

His brain overloads, and the giggle he’d swallowed earlier erupts out of him like Mt. fucking Vesuvius, and he wants to apologize, because Happy looks _hurt_ , but he’s too busy laughing until he’s fucking choking, eyes burning with tears he shouldn’t have enough moisture left in his body to produce. He’s making some animal kind of braying noise before he subsides into hiccups, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, hard, trying to force his brain to cooperate.

It’s briefly, terribly tempting, what Happy is suggesting. It would be a lot more tempting if Juice had any kind of confidence that it would be even remotely that simple.

He knows himself, and he knows Happy about as well as anyone, he supposes, and Juice knows that, at some point, he’ll break. Juice will lay all his dirty secrets out in the open, and maybe Happy will let him go – and that might even be worse, because then he’ll be _alone_ , and truly, completely cut off. The more likely scenario, though, is Happy hunting Juice down – assuming he manages some kind of escape in the first place – and fuck that, really.

Worse still would be SAMCRO putting all the pieces together, which is only a matter of time anyway – they’d only be slowed by Juice’s absence, not stopped – without Juice coming clean, if he were to try to just make a go of it on his own. They’ll use Happy to find him, because Happy has his Juice-radar and other resources squirreled away that have nothing to do with computers.

As much as Happy himself doesn’t terrify Juice, the idea of being hunted by him certainly does, and he leans harder against him to hide the shudder that runs through him at the thought.

And that’s the other thing to consider, the miserable, empty loneliness that settles in his gut just contemplating going Nomad, if only in the abstract. He’s fought, bitten and clawed and kicked and scratched and _killed_ to have a family, _this_ family, and they’re gonna end up screwing each other every which way, but he can’t just leave.

Not like this.

Not when he still has a little time to enjoy their company instead of just running until they catch up to him. Until he _lets_ them, which seems like the ultimate outcome of that particular road; eventually it would feel too much like banishment.

This is the family he’s fought for, given parts of himself to that he didn’t even know existed, and he has to stay. He has to keep trying to unfuck this mess he still can’t see a way out of, and if he fails, if his efforts aren’t enough, he’ll let them kill him if they see fit. 

He would rather be killed than banished.

Jax told him when he got voted in that everything else had to move back a row, and Juice had heard him; he’s in this now, and he has to stay to the end if he wants to find out what happens.

He knows it’s a selfish, hideous thing to think of – let alone hope for - but he thinks it’ll be Chibs at the end of his road, and it agonizes him and gives him comfort in equal measures. Part of why he has to push away so damned hard, part of why he can’t let himself peel away from Clay. But he thinks Chibs will listen to him, in that quiet moment before justice is carried out, will let him apologize, maybe say the things he never got around to saying Before; the idea makes him crave that moment in ways that are nothing like healthy.

This is what his life has come to, because of one stupid fucking detail he was too scared to address at the outset: fantasizing about the moment someone he loves has to put him down like a rabid dog, has to lose him like he has so many others.

There were times, before, in the thick of the Irish mess, when he wondered if Chibs was going end up with a kill order for Fiona; SAMBEL and the True IRA seemed to be just that twisted then, and he wouldn’t even put it past them now to get one over on Jax. He knows that Chibs would kill himself first, and doesn’t begrudge him that. When the time comes, though, he just hopes that won’t be Chibs’s line of thinking, because his own death isn’t actually at the top of Juice’s list of things he’d really rather not do. It’s there, alright, close to the top, maybe second runner-up, but not first, and it’s not first by a wide margin.

The very first thing on that list, the one he’d never forgive himself for and would die over and over trying to atone for, would be being the thing that kills Chibs.

That’s what gets him through his moments of self-loathing, when Clay’s drowning him trying to find air for himself; if Chibs can hate him, it’ll be easier on him in the end, Juice hopes. Maybe even more than his extremely fervent desire to be able to turn this goatfuck around.

Beside him, Happy lets out a long breath, slouching in a way he almost never does, and here, too, is something Juice is fucking up just by _being_. He doesn’t know when he got so good at that, but he’d like a gift return option, preferably with a refund attached.

It’s something else he’s wondered about, in his smallest, most masochistic moments, if things would be different for him now had it been Happy he’d gravitated toward instead of Chibs, if Happy might have been able to shield him a little more with no other entanglements to catch him up.

But then again, Happy had been _inside_ with them and hadn’t been able to shield Juice from shit, maybe wouldn’t have even if he could have, what with the necessity of appearances, so that’s one futility he doesn’t visit often.

Now, though, he turns blurry eyes to face him, owes him at least that much. “I can’t, man,” he croaks, voice wrecked under the weight of apology and self-recrimination and despair piled on it. It’s a race to ruin, but Juice has to fucking run _in_ it, not from it.

Happy nods and doesn’t look surprised in the least, just drops his arm back over Juice’s shoulders and lets him lean in like it’s nothing, no big, whatever, when this is the kind of thing Juice lives for anymore, these scraps of casual affection he can store away and treasure with the time he has left, that he can use for fuel to keep digging, and whether it’s his own grave or a way out of it is almost immaterial.

Juice thinks that given Happy’s still here at all, he’s probably in it to the end, too, and is horribly pleased by the notion.

If, when the end comes, Chibs can’t do it, Juice knows Happy can – and _will_ – and Juice will welcome him, too.

Juice won’t be running when Happy realizes his body is one that needs dropping.

End

**Author's Note:**

> …if you made it this far, thanks for hanging in, seriously.


End file.
